Joshua Isard, assistant professor of English and director of the M.F.A. in Creative Writing, is the first guest of 2014 for “Book Fight,” an episodic podcast in which writers critique books while also discussing craft, publishing and contemporary literature.

Hosts Tom McAllister and Mike Ingram allowed Isard to select the book, and he chose Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, a “false memoir” that imagines the Newark of Roth’s youth if Charles Lindbergh had won the 1940 presidential election. The show focused on the writers’ discussion of the believability of the book’s plot, and the continuing presence of antisemitism in America.